Back in 1960, Chrysler Corporation converted almost its entire product line from body-on-frame to unibody (still using subframes). The revolutionary change could have frightened customers off, as the Airflow did, despite extensive testing.

The company’s leaders thought they could prevent customer resistance by making the cars look fairly similar to the 1959s, a successful strategy. They were lighter and handled better, and that’s all most customers noticed. Chrysler could have made major changes to the styling to call attention to the change, but chose not to.

That made a comment by reliable source oh2o especially interesting: he wrote that the next-generation Charger would be about the size it is today. Most sources have claimed that the Charger would be shrinking to differentiate it more from the 300.

This goes along with yet-unconfirmed rumors that Chrysler might make a large front wheel drive car — a niche flagship which, thanks to shared engineering and a shared plant with the Pacifica, would not need to sell in large numbers to make a profit. The Chrysler could be even larger inside, perhaps sacrificing the V8 for a six, turbocharged or not.

The Charger would stay a muscle car, keeping its size and successful market niche, but with higher gas mileage, better acceleration with its standard engines, and better handling.

As for running against Mustangs and Camaros, there’s no reason for the Charger to do that anyway — now that we have the Dodge Challenger. Indeed, when the original Dodge Charger was made, it was not aimed at the Mustang or Camaro; that was the job of the Plymouth Barracuda (joined in 1970 by the Dodge Challenger and Plymouth Duster).